It was a little after the middle of the last century that our story
opens again. George II., whose virtues and vices were clock-like in
their regularities, was on the throne; Queen Caroline, whom he had
always abused and always venerated, was in her grave for twelve or more
years past. Outside politics were ripening for that French and English
war--in which a Montcalm and a Wolfe figured upon our side the water,
and which has been put in picturesque array by Francis Parkman; the
geraniums and oleanders were blossoming over the Portuguese grave of
Harry Fielding; Thomson had sung his last notes in his _Castle of
Indolence_ and was laid to rest--not in Kelso, or Dryburgh, where his
body should have mouldered--but in a little Richmond Church, within
gunshot of the "Star and Garter." {102} Gray was still studying the
scholarly measures of the _Bard_, in his beloved Cambridge; Horace
Walpole playing the _elegant_ was fattening on his revenues at
Strawberry Hill; while Dr. Johnson--notwithstanding the Dictionary and
the _Rambler_--had been latterly (1756) in such sore straits as to
appeal to his friend Richardson for the loan of a few guineas to save
him from jail; and Richardson, fresh then in his triumphs from
_Clarissa Harlowe_ and the great _Grandison_, was not slow to grant the
request,[1] and to enjoy all the more his Kingship among the women, in
his great house out at Hammersmith.
[Sidenote: London streets.]
A sharp walk of a quarter of an hour from St. Paul's would, in that
time, take one into the green fields that lay in Islington; and beyond,
upon the Waltham road, were the hedges, pikes, and quiet paddocks,
through which went galloping--at a little later day--that citizen of
"credit and renown," John Gilpin, instead of the clattering suburbs
that now stretch nearly all the way between Cheapside and the "Bell" at
Edmonton.
{103}
Of the many bridges which now span the Thames, only two[2]
representatives were in existence; the old Westminster was there in its
first freshness, and ferrymen quarrelling with it, because it spoiled
their carrying trade to Vauxhall and parts adjacent; and the old London
Bridge was cumbered by lumbering houses, held up by trusses and
cross-beams, while its openings were so low and its piers so many as to
make, at certain stages of the tide, furious cascades which drove great
wheels geared to cumbrous pumping machinery, to throw up water for the
behoof of London citizens. The old Fleet Prison was in existence, and
its smudgy stifling air hung over all that low region above which now
leap the great arches of the Holborn Viaduct; and round the corner, in
the reek and smoke of Fleet Street, half way between the spire of St.
Bride's and the spire of St. Clement's Danes--up a grimy court that is,
very likely, just as grimy to-day, lived that Leviathan of a man, Dr.
Samuel Johnson.
{104}
_Johnson and Rasselas._
[Sidenote: Rasselas.]
He had passed through his green days, and the nights when he strolled
supperless about London with that poor wretch of a poet Richard Savage.
The school at Edial with its three pupils was well behind him; so was
the dining behind the screen at Cave's (the bookseller who presided
over the _Gentleman's Magazine_, with St. John's Gate on the cover
then, and on the cover now): so was his age of sentiment ended.
His wife Tetty had gone the way of all flesh (1752) and he had mourned
her truly: in proof of this may be counted the presence under his roof
of a certain old lady, Miss Williams, who is peevish, who is
tempestuous, who is blind, who tests the tea with her fingers, who
_will_ talk, and then again, she _won't_ talk; yet Johnson befriends
her, pensions her--when he has money,--sends home sweetbreads from the
tavern for her; and when his friends ask why he tolerates this vixen,
he gives the soundest reason that he has--"she {105} was a friend of
Tetty; she was with poor Tetty when she died!"
And his brain was as big, or bigger, than his heart; it had made itself
felt all over England by long, honest work--by brave, loud speech. He
had snubbed the elegant Lord Chesterfield, who would have liked to see
his name upon the first page of the great Dictionary. Not an outcast
of the neighborhood but had heard of his audacious kindness; not a
linkboy but knew him by the chink of his half-pence; not a beggar but
had been bettered by his generous dole; not a watchman but knew him by
his unwieldy hulk, and his awkward, intrepid walk; and we know him--if
we know him at all--not by his _Rambler_ and his _Rasselas_, so much as
by the story of his life. Who rates _Rasselas_ among his or her
cherished books of fiction?
What an unlikely, and what a ponderous beginning it has!
"Ye who listen with credulity to the whispers of fancy and pursue with
eagerness the phantoms of hope; who expect that age will perform the
promises of youth, and that the deficiencies of the present day will be
supplied by the morrow, attend to the history of Rasselas, Prince of
Abyssinia!"
{106}
When, in days long past, I have read thus far in this elephantine
novelette to my children, they were pretty apt to explode upon me
with--"Please try something else!" Yet this elephantine novelette has
a host of excellent and eloquent moral reflections in it, shouldering
and elbowing themselves out from its flimsy dress of fiction. Shall I
give a hint of the scheme of this old story? An Abyssinian prince
living in the middle of a happy valley, walled in by mountains that are
beautiful, and watered by rivers that are musical, in the enjoyment of
all luxuries, does at last become restless--as so many people do--not
so much from a want, as from the want of a want. So he conspires with
Imlac, a poet, to escape from the thraldom of complete ease: a sister
of the prince and her handmaid steal away with them; and with plenty of
jewels the party enter upon their exploration of the ways of outside
life. They encounter hermits whose solitude does not cure their pains,
and shepherds whose simplicities do not conquer misfortune, and
philosophers whose philosophy does not relieve their anxieties, and
scholars whose learning does not make them happy.
{107}
Imlac, the poet, sums up their findings in saying--"You will rarely
meet one who does not think the lot of his neighbor better than his
own." This is its whole philosophy. There are interlarded discourses
upon learning, and marriage, and death, and riches, which might have
been cut from a _Rambler_ or from a sermon. They travel through upper
Egypt, and sojourn in the grand Cairo; but there is no shimmer of the
desert, and no flash of crescent or scimitar, and no dreamy
orientalism; its Eastern sages talk as if they might have thundered
their ponderous sentences from the pulpit of St. Bride's. As a
finality--if the tale can be said to have any finality--the princess
thinks she would like--of all things--Knowledge: the poor handmaid, who
has had her little adventure, by being captured by a Bedouin chief,
thinks she would like best a convent on some oasis in the desert; while
the prince would like a miniature kingdom whose rule he might
administer with justice as easily as one might wind a watch; but all
agree that, when the Nile flood favors, they will go contentedly back
to the happy valley from which they set out upon their {108}
wanderings. It is interesting to know that the story was written by
Dr. Johnson on the evenings of a single week; and written--before he
had come to his pension[3]--to defray the expenses of his mother's
funeral; and it is interesting further to know that the magniloquent
tale did forge its way into the front rank of readers at a time when
_Roderick Random_ and _Tom Jones_ were comparatively fresh books, and
only five years after Mr. Richardson had issued from his book-shop
under the shadows of St. Bride's, hardly a gunshot away from the house
of Johnson, the voluminous history of _Sir Charles Grandison_.
_The Painter and the Club._
[Sidenote: Sir Joshua Reynolds.]
Among the friends the Doctor made in those days of _Ramblers_ and
_Idlers_ was one Joshua Reynolds,[4] some fourteen years the junior of
the Doctor, but sedate and thoughtful beyond his age; with an eye, too,
for the beautiful faces of young {109} English girls which had never
been opened on them before; and doing artist work that is quite
different in quality and motive from that of the old stand-by Mr.
Hogarth, who not long before this time had been preaching his painted
sermons of the _Rake's Progress_.
Reynolds had made his trip to Italy, and had brought back from Rome, in
addition to his studies of Raphael--an affection of the ear--caught, as
he always said, in the draughty corridors of the Vatican, which obliged
him ever after to carry an ear-trumpet; but his courtesy and grace and
precision of speech made the awkwardness forgotten. Looking at the
exquisite child's face of his little Penelope Boothby, expressing all
that was most winning in girlhood for him who was so reverent of
exterior graces, and looking from this to the leathern, seamy face of
Johnson, and his unlaundered linen, and snuffy frills (when he wore
any), and it is hard to understand the intimacy of these two men; but
there was a tenderness of soul under the Doctor's slouchy ways which
the keen painter recognized; and in the painter there was a resolute
intellection, which Johnson was not slow to {110} detect, and which
presently--when the new Royal Academy was founded by George III.--was
to have expression in the great painter's discourses on Art--discourses
which for their courageous common-sense will, I think, outrank much of
the art-writing of to-day.
[Sidenote: Turks-Head Club.]
In 1760 (the year after _Rasselas_ appeared) Reynolds moved into a fine
house, for that day, in Leicester Square--a quarter now given over
mostly to French lodgers; but in its neighborhood one may find a marble
bust of the eminent painter; and the house where he gave great steaming
dinners--famous for their profusion and disorderly array--is still
there, though given over to small artists and sellers of bric-a-brac.
His good sister, Miss Fanny, who was his housekeeper, loved painting
and poetry, and a drive in the painter's chariot, which he set up in
later days, better than she loved housewifery. Over-shrewd ones said
that Sir Joshua (the title came to him a few years after with the
presidency of the Royal Academy) did not marry because he had wholesome
dread of a wife's extravagance; certain it is that he remained a
bachelor all his life, and {111} thereby was a fitting person to
discuss with the widowed Johnson the formation of a club. The Doctor
was always clubably disposed; so he caught at the idea of Sir Joshua,
and thence sprung that society--called "The Literary Club" afterward,
which held its sessions, first at the Turk's Head, in Gerrard Street,
Soho Square--on Monday evenings at the start, and afterward on
Fridays--numbering among its early members Johnson, Burke, Reynolds,
Hawkins, Beauclerk, and Goldsmith. This famous club, though moving
from place to place in the closing years of the last century, still
preserved its identity; it took a new lease of life in the first
quarter of the present century, and it still survives in a very quiet
old age, holding its fortnightly meetings--rather sparingly attended,
it is true--at Willis's Rooms, St. James's Street, in the west of
London. Among recent members may be named Gladstone, Sir Frederick
Leighton, Lord Salisbury, the Duke of Argyle, Tennyson, and Matthew
Arnold.[5]
{112}
_Some Old Club-men._
[Sidenote: Edmund Burke.]
Burke,[6] who was among the original nine members, was very much the
junior of Johnson; but known to him as a sometime Irish student at law,
who had written only a few years before two brilliant treatises; one on
_Natural Society_, and the other on the _Sublime and Beautiful_.
Later he had done excellent historic work in connection with _Dodsley's
Annual Register_; but he had not yet entered upon that sea of political
turmoil over which he was to sweep in so grand a way and with such
blaze of triumph. It is possible indeed that he was indebted to the
associations of the club for some of the initiative steps toward that
wonderful career whose outcome in Parliament, in the courts, and in
pamphleteering, has become a component part of the {113} literature of
England. Burke, even at that early stage of his progress (his first
speech was made in 1766) had all his vast resources at ready command;
Johnson did not wish to meet him in debate without warning; true he was
afraid of no mere eloquence; he was used to puncturing bloat of that
sort; but Burke's most fiery speeches were beaded throughout with
globules of thought, which must be grasped and squelched one by one, if
mastery were sought. He was impetuous, too, and aggressive, but
reverent of the superior age and reputation of the Doctor; and I
daresay coyly avoided those American questions which later came to the
front, and upon which they held views diametrically opposed. In after
years it used to be said that Burke's speeches would empty the benches
of the Commons--ye philosophized; and when not heated, spoke with a
drawling utterance and a touch of Irish brogue flavoring his voice;
indeed he talked so well he was never tired of talking; his sentences
so swelled out under the amplitude of his illustrations and allusions
that I think he came at last to take a pride in their very longitude,
and trailed his gorgeous convolutions of {114} speech with the
delighted eagerness with which a fine woman trails her sheen of satins
and velvets.
[Sidenote: Topham Beauclerk.]
Dr. Nugent, a physician of culture, father-in-law of Mr. Burke, was
also one of the original members of the club--getting the
preferment--as so many in all times do get preferment--simply because
son-in-law, father-in-law, or nephew--to somebody else. Another
noticeable member of the club was Topham Beauclerk, not by any means
the man a casual observer would have taken for an associate of Johnson.
He was courtly and elegant in bearing, a man of fashion, smiled upon by
such as Lord Chesterfield and Horace Walpole, and who traced his
descent back through the first Duke of St. Albans to Nell Gwynne and
Charles the Second. He inherited by right, therefore, gayety and humor
and wit, and rare histrionic power, and Satan-ry to match. Old Dr.
Johnson fairly languished in his admiration of the way in which Topham
Beauclerk could tell a story. "It costs me fearful pains," he was used
to say; "but this fellow trips through with an airy grace that costs
him nothing."
Beauclerk was proud of his membership, and {115} brought his own share
of wit, of general information, and of cheery _bonhomie_ to the common
reckoning. He married a certain well-known and much-admired Lady Diana
Bolingbroke--a divorcee of two days' standing--and treated her
shamefully; that being the proper thing for a fashionable man to do,
who was emulous of the domestic virtues of George II. At his death,
with a large jointure in hand, she had peace; and Burke said, with a
humor that was uncommon to him: "It was really enlivening to behold her
placed in that sweet house, released from all her cares: L1,000 per
annum at her disposal, and her husband dead! It was pleasant, it was
delightful, to see her enjoyment of the situation!" Beauclerk was too
fine a fellow to think well of the domesticities; there was a good deal
of the blood of Charles the Second in him. Over and over we come upon
such--men of parts squandered in the small interchanges of fashionable
life; perpetually saying slight, good things for a dinner-table;
telling a story with rare gusto; the envy of heavy talkers who can
never catch butterflies on the wing; looking down upon serious duty
whether in art or {116} letters; and so, leaving nothing behind them
but a pretty and not always delicate perfume.
[Sidenote: David Garrick.]
Another of the clubmen was David Garrick--not one of the original nine,
but voted in a few years after. Dr. Johnson does indeed give a
characteristic growl when his name is proposed--"What do we want of
play-actors?" but his good nature triumphs. Little Garrick was an old
scholar of his at Edial; and though he has conquered all theatric arts
and won all their prizes, he is still for him, "little Garrick." A
taste for splendor and dress had always belonged to him. In his
boy-days he had written to his father, who was stationed at Gibraltar,
"I hope, Papa, you find velvet cheap there; for some one has given me a
knee-buckle, and it would go capitally with velvet breeches. Amen, and
so be it!"
That love for the buckles and the velvet clung to him. When Edial
school broke up, he tramped with Johnson to London--the master with the
poor tragedy of _Irene_ in his pocket, and the boy with such gewgaws
and pence as he could rake together. Perhaps, also, the tragic
splendor of Shakespeare's verse shimmering mistily across his {117}
visions of the future, making his finger-ends tingle and his pulse beat
high.
But a legacy of L1,000 comes to the Garrick lad presently, which he
invests in a wine business, in company with his staid brother, Peter
Garrick, who looks after affairs in Lichfield, and who is terribly
disturbed when he hears that David is taking to theatric studies;--has
acted parts even!
And Davy writes back relenting, and sorry to grieve them at home; but
keeps at his parts. And Peter writes more and more disconsolately,
lamenting this great reproach, and David writes pretty letters of
fence, and the wine business leaks away, and Peter is in despair; and
Davy sends remittances which are certainly not legitimate business
dividends, thus propping up the sinking wine venture; and before Peter
is reconciled, has become the hero of the London boards, with a bank
credit that would buy all their ports and clarets twice over.
And this wonderful histrionic genius, probably unparalleled on the
English stage before or since his day, so gay, so brisk--so witty
betimes--so capable of a song or a fandango, brought life to the {118}
club. Nor was there lack in him of literary qualities; his prologues
were of the best, and he had the charming art of listening
provocatively when the great doctor expounded.
_Mr. Boswell._
[Sidenote: James Boswell.]
Another early member of the club, whom I think we should have liked to
see making his way with a very assured step into the Turk's Head, of a
Monday or a Friday, was James Boswell, Esquire.[7] It is a household
name now, and will remain so for years to come by reason of the
extraordinary life which he wrote, of his master and patron, Dr.
Johnson. Yet it was only a year or so before the formation of the club
that this jaunty Scotch gentleman, son of a laird, and of vast
assurance--having been a tuft-hunter from his youth--caught his first
sight of the great Doctor, in the little shop of Davies the bookseller;
and the great man had given a snubbing, then and there, to the pert,
but always obsequious Boswell; the future biographer, however, digested
{119} excellently well provision of that sort, and I think the Doctor
had always a tenderness for those who took his flagellations without
complaint. Certain it is that there grew up thereafter an intimacy
between the two, which is one of the most curious things in the history
of English Men of Letters. I know that hard things are said of Mr.
Boswell, and that every tyro in criticism loves to have a blow at the
well-fed arrogance of the man. Macaulay has specially given him a
grievous black-eye; but Macaulay--particularly in those early review
papers--was apt to let his exuberant and cumulative rhetoric carry him
up to a climacteric which the ladder of his facts would scantly reach.
To be sure Boswell was a toady; but rather from veneration of those he
worshipped than desire of personal advancement; he was an arrant
tuft-hunter, thereby enlarging the sphere of his observations; but he
was fairly up in classical studies; had large fund of information; was
sufficiently well-bred (indeed, in contrast with the Doctor, I think we
may say excellently well-bred); he rarely, if ever, said malicious
things, though often impertinent ones; {120} his conundrums again and
again gave a new turn to dull talk; and he had a way, which some even
more stolid people possess in our time, of _baiting_ conversation by
interposing irrelevant matter, with an air of innocence that
captivates; then there was the pleasant conceit of the man--full-fed,
sleek, and shining out all over him--over his face, and his erect but
somewhat paunchy figure; all which qualities were contributory to the
humor and fulness and charm of that famous biography which we can read
backward or forward--in the morning or at night--by the chapter or by
the page--with our pipe or without it--with our knitting or without
it--and always with an amazed and delighted sense that the dear, old,
clumsy, gray-stockinged, snuff-ridden Doctor has come to life once
more, and is toddling along our streets, belching out his wit and
wrath, and leaning on the arm of the ever-ready and most excellent and
obsequious James Boswell, Esquire.
Such a book is not to be sneered at, nor the writer of it; perhaps we
think it would be easy for us or anybody to write such another, if we
{121} would only forget conventionalisms and have the courage of our
impressions; but if we made trial, I daresay we should find that to
forget conventionalisms is just what we can't and do not know how to
do; and so our impressions get bundled into the swathings of an
ambitious rhetoric which spoils our chances and vulgarizes effort. I
do not say Boswell was a very high-toned man or a very capable man in
most directions; but he did have the art of easy narrative to a most
uncommon degree; and did clearly perceive and apprehend just those
points and qualities which go to make portraiture complete and
satisfying.[8] I do not believe that he stupidly blundered into doing
his biographic work well; stupid {122} blundering never did and never
could accomplish work that will meet acceptance by the intelligence of
the world.
_Gibbon._
[Sidenote: Edward Gibbon.]
I come now to speak of a more respectable personage--one of whom you
have often heard, and whose resounding periods, full of Roman History
you will most surely have read; I mean Edward Gibbon[9]--not an
original member of the club, but elected at an early day. His life has
great interest. He was the sole survivor of seven children; his father
being a Member of Parliament--very reputable, but very inefficient.
There were fears that his famous son would be a cripple for life, so
weakly was he, and so ill put together; but growing stronger, he went
to Oxford; was there for only a short time; did not love Oxford {123}
then, or ever; inclined to theologic inquiry and became Romanist; which
so angered his father that he sent him to Lausanne, Switzerland, to be
re-converted under the Calvinist teachers of that region to
Protestantism. This in due time came about; and it was perhaps by a
sort of compensating mental retaliation for this topsy-turvy condition
of his youth that he assumed and cultivated the pugnacious indifference
to religion which so marked all his later years and much of his work.
He had his love passages, too, there upon the beautiful borders of Lake
Geneva; a certain Mademoiselle Curchod, daughter of a Protestant
clergyman, lived near by; and with her the future historian read
poetry, read philosophy, read the skies and the mountains, discoursed
upon the conjugation of verbs, and upon conjugalities of other sorts;
but this the English father disapproved as much as he had disapproved
of Romanism; and by reason of this--as Gibbon tells us, in his
delightful autobiography--that "sweet dream came to an end." It is
true the French biographers[10] {124} put a rather different phase upon
the story, and represent that while Mademoiselle respected young Mr.
Gibbon very much, she could not return his ardor. Two colors, I have
observed, are very commonly given to any sudden interruption of such
festivities.
Mademoiselle, however, did not pine in single blessedness; she had a
career before her. She became in a few years the distinguished wife of
Necker, the great finance minister of France in the days immediately
preceding the Revolution, and the mother of a still more famous
daughter--that Mme. de Stael who wrote _Corinne_.
Though Gibbon lived and died a bachelor, he always maintained friendly
relations with his old flame Mme. Necker, being frequently a guest at
her elegant Paris home; and she, on at least one occasion, a guest of
the historian in London. It was in the year 1774--ten years after its
foundation, that Gibbon was elected member of the Literary Club; he
being then in his thirty-seventh year and well known for his wide
learning and his conversational powers. He was recognized as an
author, too, of critical acumen, and great range {125} of language;
some of his earlier treatises were written in French, which he knew as
well as English; German he never knew; but the first volume of the
_History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_ did not appear
until the year 1776--a good tag for that great American date! That
first volume made a prodigious surprise, and immense applause. Poor
Hume[11] (whose story waits), struggling with the mortal disease which
was to carry him off in that year, wrote his praises from Edinburgh.
Horace Walpole, who had the vanity of professing to know everybody
worth knowing, says, "I am astonished; I know the man a little; I could
not believe it was in him; I must get to know him better."
Yet Gibbon was not a modest man in the ordinary sense; never, except
when--very rarely--warmed into a colloquial display of his
extraordinary learning, did he impress a stranger with any sense of his
power. He was short and corpulent; had a waddling walk and puffy
cheeks and a weak {126} double chin; with very much in his general
aspect and manner to explain the miscarriage of his love-affair, and
nothing at all to explain the Decline of the Roman Empire. Withal, he
was obsequious, studiously courteous; had ready smiles at command; had
a mincing manner; his wig was always in order, and so was his flowered
waistcoat; and he tapped his snuff-box with an easy degage air, that
gave no warrant for anything more than an agreeable titillation of the
nerves. But if an opening came for a thrust of his cumulated learning
in establishing some historic point in dispute, it poured out with a
gush, authority upon authority, citation on citation, as full and
impetuous and unlooked for as a great spring flood.
He went over to Paris with his honors fresh upon him; was cordially
received there; the Necker influence, and his familiarity with French,
standing him in good stead. He affected a certain style too. "I
have," he says, "two footmen in handsome liveries behind my coach, and
my apartment is hung with damask." He loved such display, though only
the hired luxury of a hotel. He had never a taste for the simpler
enjoyments of {127} English country life; never mounted a horse and
scorned partridge shooting or angling. In a letter to a friend he
says, "Never pretend to allure me by painting in odious colors the dust
of London. I love the dust, and whenever I move into the Weald, it is
to visit _you_, and not your trees."
It does not appear that he went frequently to the Turk's-Head Club.
The brusquerie of Johnson would have grated on him--grated on him in
more senses than one, we suspect; and the gruff Doctor would have
scorned his dilettanteism as much as his scepticism. Gibbon took
kindly, though, to Goldsmith; but he hated Boswell honestly, and
Boswell honestly hated back.[12]
His letters were never strong or bright, nor were his occasional
literary criticisms either acute or profound; all his great powers were
kept in reserve for his _magnum opus_--the History. For the quietude
he thought necessary to its completion he went again to the home of his
youth at Lausanne, and there, in sight of that wondrous {128} panorama
of lake and mountain, upon a site where now stands the Hotel
Gibbon,[13] and a few acacia trees under which the historian meditated,
the great work was brought to completion--a great work then, and a
great work now, measured by what standard we will. To say that one
approaches the accuracy of Gibbon is to exhaust praise; to say that one
surpasses him in reach of learning is to deal in hyperbole. Even the
historian, Dr. Freeman, who, I think, did much prefer saying a critical
thing to saying a pleasant thing, testified that--"He remains the one
historian of the eighteenth century whom modern research has neither
set aside, nor threatened to set aside." Modern high critics sneer at
his large, ceremonious manner; Ruskin pronounces "his English the worst
ever written by an educated Englishman"[14] (the same Ruskin who found
a "mass of errors" under the sunshine of Claude). But let {129} us
remember what burden of knowledge those grandiloquent sentences of
Gibbon had to carry; what reach of empire they had to cover! Here be
no pigmies, predicating the outcome of little factions, no discourse
about the smallness of word-meanings; but vast populations are arrayed
under our eye. We cannot talk of the stars in their courses as we talk
of the will-o'-wisps of politicians. Rome marching to its dissolution,
with captive nations in its trail,[15] must put a lofty strain upon the
page that records her downfall.
Through all, this corpulent, learned, dainty, keen-eyed, indefatigable
little man, is cool--over cool; he has no enthusiasms but the
enthusiasm of knowing things. No wrongs that he records seem to chafe
him; his blood has no boiling-point; his love no flame; his indignation
no scorching power. A great, imposing, processional array of
sovereigns, armies, nations--of the wise, the vicious, the savage, the
learned, the good; but not a figure in it all, however pure or
innocent, which kindles his sympathies into a glow; not one {130} so
profligate as to make his anger burn; not one so lofty or so true as to
give warmth to his expressions of reverence.
Yet notwithstanding, if any of my young readers are projecting the
writing of a history, I strongly advise them to avoid the subject of
the _Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_.
_Oliver Goldsmith._
[Sidenote: Oliver Goldsmith.]
And now we come to another member of our club, who reaped far fewer of
the substantial rewards of life.----Who, with any relish for the
beatitudes of letters, has not tender reverence for the memory of
Goldsmith? He was the youngest member of the club at its start, and
yet the thirty-four years he then counted had been full of change and
adventure: he had wandered away early from the beautiful paternal home
of Lissoy in Ireland; had studied in Scotland and in Leyden; had idled
in both; had been vagrant over Europe; had tried medicine, tried
flute-playing, tried school-keeping, tried proof-reading for the old
shopkeeper, Samuel Richardson, and had finally landed in a court not
{131} far from Johnson's, where he did work for the booksellers.
Amongst this work were certain essays which attracted the old Doctor's
attention by their rare literary qualities; and the old gentleman had
befriended the author--all the more when he found him a man who did not
befriend himself; and who, if he had only sixpence in his pocket (and
he was not apt to have more), would give the half of it to a beggar. A
little over-love for wine, too--when the chance of a tavern dinner came
to him--was another weakness which the great Doctor knew how to pardon;
and so Goldsmith became one of the original clubmen; Reynolds, with all
his courtly ceremony, growing to love the man; so did Burke; but
Boswell was always a little jealous of him, and Goldsmith caught at any
occasion for giving a good slap to that sleek self-consequence which
shone out all over Boswell--even to his knee-buckles and his silken
hose. I do not suppose that Goldsmith contributed much to the
weightier debates of the club, and can imagine him sulking somewhat if
he found no good opening in the troubled waters in which to feather his
dainty oar. Again there was an {132} awkwardness, partly
self-consciousness, partly organic tremor, which put him at bad odds in
promiscuous talk; to say nothing of the irascibility which he had not
learned to control, and which sometimes put a stammer to the tongue;
hence, Boswell says, "poorest of talkers;" but around in his chambers,
with one or two sympathetic listeners only, and perhaps a bottle of
Canary flanking him, and with a topic started that chimed with the
emotional nature of the man, and I am sure he would have talked out a
whole chapter of a new _Vicar of Wakefield_.
But whatever the tongue might do, there was no doubt about the pen; we
find him even undertaking discourses upon _Animated Nature_, and
history--of Greece or of Rome. Has he then the plodding faculty, and
is he a man of research? No; but he has the aptitude to seize upon the
plums in the researches of others, and embody them in the amber of his
language. He poaches all over the fields of history and science, and
bags the bright-winged birds which the compilers have never seen, or
which, if seen, they have classed with the gray and the dun of the
{133} sparrows. His poetry, when he makes it, may not have so much of
polished clang and witty jingle as the verse of Pope; it may lack the
great ground-swell of rhythmic cadence which belongs to Johnson;
but--somewhere between the lines, and subtly pervading every pause and
flow--there is a tenderness, a suave, poetic perfume, a caressing touch
of both mind and heart which we cannot describe--nor forget.
Of the original club-men, Goldsmith[16] died first, in 1774, at
Brick-court in the Temple; he was forty-five years old, and yielded to
a quick, sharp illness at the last, into which all the worries of a
much worried life seemed to crowd him. He had been plotting new works,
and a new life too; a getting away (if it might be) from the smirch
that hung about him in the Temple corridors, out to the Edgware
farmery, where primroses and hedges grew, and where there was a scent
upon the air, of that old country home of Lissoy:
"I still had hopes my latest hours to crown,
Amidst those humble bowers to lay me down;
{134}
To husband out life's taper at the close,
And keep the flame from wasting by repose.
I still had hopes, for pride attends me still,
Amidst the swains to show my book-learned skill;
Around my fire an evening group to draw
And tell of all I felt and all I saw.
And, as a hare, whom hounds and horns pursue,
Pants to the place from which at first he flew,
I still had hopes, my long vexations past,
Here to return, and die at home at last."
A stolid physician, called in consultation in those last days, and
seeing his disordered state, asked, "If his mind was at ease?" Mind at
ease! Surely a rasping question to put to a man whose pulse is
thumping toward the hundreds, whose purse is empty, plans broken up,
credit gone, debts crowding him at every point, pains racking him, and
the grimy Fleet Prison close by, throwing its shadow straight across
his path. No, his mind is _not_ at ease; and the pulse does gallop
faster and faster, and harder and harder to the end; when, let us
hope--ease did come, and--God willing--"Rest for the weary."
{135}
_The Thrales and the End._
Meantime Dr. Johnson has been withdrawing somewhat from his old regular
attendance upon the club. New men have come in, of whiggish
tendencies; he hears things he does not like to hear; the Americans are
at last making a fight of it; he is a heavier walker than once; besides
which his increased revenue has perhaps made him a little more free of
the Mitre tavern than of old; then he has made the acquaintance of Mr.
Thrale and of Mrs. Thrale--an every-way memorable acquaintance for him.
Mr. Thrale is a wealthy brewer, one while Member of Parliament--his
works standing on the ground in Southwark now held by Barclay &
Perkins, some of whose dependencies cover the site of that Globe
Theatre where William Shakespeare was sometime actor and shareholder.
Withal, Mr. Thrale is a most generous, sound-headed, practical, kindly
man, without being very acute, or cultured, or any way accomplished.
Mrs. Thrale, however, {136} has her literary qualities; can jingle a
little of not inharmonious verse of her own; reads omnivorously; is apt
in French or Latin; is full of esprit and liveliness, and is not
without a certain charm of person. She is small indeed, but with
striking features and picturesque; easily gracious at her table; witty,
headstrong, arch, proud of association with the great Dr. Johnson;
really having strong friendship for him; enduring his rudenesses;
yielding to him in very much, but not so submissive as to take his
opinion (or that of any other man) about whether she should or should
not marry Signor Piozzi, when afterward she came to be a widow. In
fact, she had in fine development the very womanly way--of having her
own way.
The Thrales owned a delightful country place at Streatham, a pleasant
drive out from the city, down through Southwark and Brixton and on the
road to Croydon; and there Johnson went again and again: Mr. Thrale was
so kind, and Mrs. Thrale so engaging. At last they put at his service
a complete apartment, where he could, on his blue days, growl to his
liking. Who can say {137} what might have been the career of the great
lexicographer if he had fallen into such downy quarters in his callow
days; should we have had the Dictionary? Surely never the life of
Savage, with its personal piquancy, and possibly never the Boswelliana.
[Sidenote: Tour to the Hebrides.]
But Johnson was not wholly idle; neither the luxuries of Streatham, nor
the chink of his pension money, could stay the unrest of his mind: he
writes dedications for other people--shoals of them; he re-edits twice
over the great Dictionary; publishes _The False Alarm_; completes his
_Lives of the Poets_; and in the interim--between visits to Oxford,
Brighton, and Lichfield--he makes that famous trip, with Boswell, to
Scotland and the Hebrides; and never, I think, was so unimportant a
journey so known of men. Every smart boy in every American school,
knows now what puddings he ate, and about the cudgel that he carried,
and the boiled mutton that was set before him. The bare mention of
these things brings back a relishy smack of the whole story of the
journey. Is it for the literary quality of the book which describes
it? Is it for our interest {138} in the great, nettlesome, ponderous
traveller; or is it by reason of a sneaking fondness we all have for
the perennial stream of Boswell's gossip? I cannot tell, for one: I do
not puzzle with the question; but I enjoy.
[Sidenote: Last days of Johnson.]
In the year 1779 his old friend Garrick died,--leaving nearly a million
of dollars, which came to him by that stage following and thrift which
had so worried the orthodox and respectable brother Peter of the
wine-shop. The interesting Mrs. Garrick came, after a time, to a
lively widowhood on the Adelphi Terrace--looking out over what is now
the London Embankment, and with such friends as Miss Hannah More, and
"Evelina" Burney, and the old wheezing Doctor himself, to cheer her
loneliness and share her luxurious dinners. The year after, in 1780,
Topham Beauclerk died; and so that other bright light in the Turks-Head
Club is dashed forever.
These, things may well have put new wrinkles in the old Doctor's
visage; but he still keeps good courage; works in his spasmodic
way;--dines with the printer Strahan; dines at the Mitre; dines at
Streatham; coquettes, in his lumbering {139} way, with Mrs. Thrale, and
goes home to the fogs and grime of Bolt Court.
Shall I quote from a letter to the last-named lady, dating in the year
1780?
"How do you think I live? On Thursday I dined with Hamilton and went
thence to Mrs. Ord. On Friday at the Reynolds'--on Sunday at Dr.
Burney's with the two sweets [daughters of Mrs. T.] from Kensington; on
Monday with Reynolds; to-day with Mr. Langton; to-morrow with the
Bishop of St. Asaph. I not only scour the town from day to day, but
many visitors come to me in the morning, so that my work [_Lives of the
Poets_] makes little progress.
"You are at all places of high resort, and bring home hearts by dozens,
while I am seeking for something to say of men about whom I know
nothing but their verses.... Congreve, whom I despatched at the
Borough, is one of the best of the little lives: but then _I had the
benefit of your conversation_."
This is very well for a plethoric old gentleman of seventy-one. The
next year, 1781, his friend and patron Mr. Thrale died. This loss was
a grievous one for Johnson. He had relished his kindliness and his
large, practical sagacity: indeed I think he had relished in him the
lack of that literary talk and allusion which so many of {140} his
acquaintances thought it necessary to throw out as bait for the
Leviathan. But was the Doctor to enjoy still the delights of that
Streatham retreat? It is certain that a year did not pass before there
was much gossip, in neighboring gossiping circles, that associated the
name of Johnson with the clever and wealthy widow, as a possible
successor to Mr. Thrale. I do not think any such gossips of the male
kind ever ventured within easy reach of the Doctor's oaken cudgel.
There is no evidence that any thought of such alliance ever came into
Johnson's mind; but I _do_ think he had sometimes regaled himself with
the hope of a certain kindly protectorate over the luxuries and the
mistress of Streatham, which would keep all its old charms open to him,
and permit of a fatherly dalliance with the family there. It appeared,
however, that the clever lady had other views; and did marry three
years after--very much to the disgust of her children--Signor Piozzi, a
musician of very fair reputation; did live a happy enough life with
him; did publish a book or two full of sparkle and many errors, and
some mischievously strong cuts at people she disliked; did live {141}
thereafter to a great old age, and carried roses in her cheeks amongst
the eighties; though I think these roses came from the apothecaries.
She was always fond of decoration.
In 1783 the Doctor had a stroke of paralysis, from which, however, he
rallied and was himself once more--dining with Dilly, with Reynolds, at
the Mitre too, with Boswell; he even projects new work--suggests the
formation of another club in the city, and more within reach: So
tenaciously do we cling, and so hopefully do we keep plotting! Finally
in June, 1784, he takes his last dinner at the old club; Reynolds and
Burke and Langton and Boswell are there, with others he does not know
so well; he is feeble at this sitting and ill at ease; clouds gathering
over him, from which, however, there flashes out from time to time a
blaze of his old wit.
Thereafter, it is mostly Bolt-court--poor blind Miss Williams gone, by
this time, and also the sorry physician who had been long a pensioner
on him, and whose nostrums he had taken out of charity. Of all the
faces that once welcomed him {142} there in their way, only his black
man Francis left.
Langton comes to see him; and Reynolds comes bringing more cheer,
though the ear trumpet is awkward for the sick man; Burke comes and
shows all the melting tenderness of a woman; Boswell, too--before he
goes north--bounces in and out, his conceit and assurance mollified and
decently draped by the sorrow that hung over him. Little Miss Burney
rushes in to the ante-room and stays there hours, hoping some shortest
last interview with the great man who had said kindly things to
her--never thinking that he could not relish her gossippy prattle about
the court, and the royal George, now that a great, swift tide was
lifting him into the presence of another king.
[Sidenote: Death of Johnson.]
The old superstitious awe and dread of death, which had belonged to him
throughout life, disappeared in these latter days, and the gloom--with
its teasing vampires--was rarefied into a certain celestial haze that
hung over him tenderly. He did not excitedly wrestle with the awful
possibilities the change might bring, nor work himself {143} into any
craze of pious exhilaration to bridge the gap; but was restful as a
babe at last, and so was led away tranquilly, by his own child-like
trust, over the threshold of the mysteries we must all confront.
[1] See note, Hill's Boswell, p. 304, vol. i.
[2] Blackfriars was not built until 1769, and the old Westminster in
1750.
[3] Pension granted, 1762: _Rasselas_ published, 1759.
[4] Joshua Reynolds, b. 1723; d. 1792. His _Discourses_ published,
1771. Life by Leslie, 1867.
[5] It is from this latter gentleman--whom I had the good fortune to
meet in the course of his visit to this country--that my information in
regard to the latter _status_ of the club is derived.
[6] Edmund Burke, b. 1729; d. 1797. Editions of his works are various.
Best life of him is by John Morley (1867).
[7] B. 1740; d. 1795.
[8] There is, to be sure, a great deal of what the natural reserve of
most men would lead them to withhold. But if this "free-telling" does
add some of the finer lights and most artistic touches to his picture,
and if he perceives this to be so (and have we any right to assume the
contrary?) shall we not credit it rightly to his book-making art and
commend it accordingly?
That his gentlemanly reserves are not of a pronounced sort may count
against the delicacy of his nature, but not necessarily against his
capacity as a literary artist.
[9] Edward Gibbon, b. 1737; d. 1794. Dr. Milman's is the standard
edition of his History. Bowdler's edition (1825) is noticeable for its
expurgations. The work, through its translations, holds as large a
place in the historic _curriculum_ of French, Italian, and German
students, as in that of English-speaking nations.
[10] _Biographie Universale_; Article Necker (Mme. Necker, _nee Susanne
Curchod_).
[11] Hume's first volume of English History appeared in 1754--just
twenty-two years before the _Decline and Fall_. Hume was about
twenty-six years Gibbon's senior.
[12] Boswell says in his Diary (1779): "Gibbon is an ugly, affected,
disgusting fellow, and poisons our literary club to me."
[13] The old house has wholly disappeared; the hotel covers a portion
of Gibbon's garden.
[14] Letter in the _Pall Mall Gazette_ in relation to Sir John
Lubbock's "List of Hundred Best Books." Reprinted in _Critic_
(American) of March 20, 1886.
[15] See, for instance, account of Julian's march, and of the taking of
Constantinople.
[16] Oliver Goldsmith, b. 1728; d. 1774. Fullest and best _Life_, that
of John Forster.
{144}